


tides

by miuyi (rainiest)



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Destabilized reality, M/M, Societal Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-15
Updated: 2017-09-15
Packaged: 2018-12-25 06:57:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12030585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainiest/pseuds/miuyi
Summary: Wonwoo creates stories and Junhui creates storms. The rest is up for interpretation.





	tides

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yoonbot (iverins)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iverins/gifts).
  * Inspired by [pools](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7943068) by [yoonbot (iverins)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iverins/pseuds/yoonbot). 



> Dear yoonbot/iverins,  
> When I read _pools_ it hit me like a truck and I knew at once I’d have to remix it. I think I got a little too carried away but that was only because it was so gorgeous, so thank you for writing it. I hope you (and anyone else who may be reading this) enjoy~
> 
> Thank you to T an actual angel for helping me out with this, and to F for reading through it at the very last minute as usual.
> 
> For the purposes of the plot both Soonyoung and Wonwoo in this fic are from Wonwoo’s hometown of Changwon.
> 
> Depending on how you wish to interpret the events of this fic, I’d recommend listening to either [The District Sleeps Alone](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Txl5qkq-76E) by Birdy or [When You Were Young](https://youtu.be/ff0oWESdmH0?t=1m28s) by The Killers. There’s also a third song that gets mentioned in the fic, and I’d recommend you click the link and read the lyrics if you don’t already know them, as it is slightly important to the plot.

It’s like this: when Wonwoo closes his eyes he can hear the sea. Not the beach—the crash of waves and the gulls and sunlight on treetops and cliffs and sand—but the sea.

(Joshua’s voice: _You always have had a gift for telling stories, Wonwoo._ )

It’s like this: from within the ocean sounds like loneliness feels, silence upon silence upon silence.

(Soonyoung’s: _That’s just a nice way of saying you talk a lot of shit. Pass the lettuce._ )

 _It’s like this,_ Wonwoo wants to tell someone, anyone, as the saltwater rushes into his mouth, _it’s like, like–_

“Preferably before my next birthday, Shakespeare,” says Soonyoung. Wonwoo opens his eyes. The people in the booth beside theirs laugh loudly at something. A Soonyoung-shaped smudge is looking at him expectantly from across the table.

“That’s not what I meant,” Joshua mutters into his food. The grill lets off a burst of smoke that veers in Wonwoo’s direction. He squeezes his eyes shut again.

“Don’t assume I actually know when your birthday is,” he says in Soonyoung’s general direction, and Jihoon snorts. Wonwoo feels Mingyu set down his chopsticks and reach over him for the plate of lettuce leaves.

Soonyoung stage-whispers, “It’s cute how he doesn’t realize we all know he knows it’s tomorrow,” and Jihoon, the traitorous little shit, laughs out loud.

“I have eyedrops if you want them,” Joshua offers.

“I’m good,” says Wonwoo. His eyes are still stinging so he presses his sleeve over them. Mingyu’s hand comes to rest on his knee beneath the table as he picks his chopsticks back up with the other. “Just give me a sec.”

The grill sizzles along to the soundtrack of conversation. Color begins to bleed into the black of Wonwoo’s eyelids. When he licks his lips they taste of salt.

(Someone, softly: _And then?_ )

 

 

 

 

When the sky is calm Wonwoo’s dreams are not. When it storms they aren’t either, so the point is probably moot.

The guy from down the hall always asks him about it—the weather, not his dreams—when they cross paths in the bathroom, or one of them makes a pot of coffee in the morning that’s too much for one person to drink.

“They’re predicting thirty-five millimeters in Daegu today, can you believe that?” or “Dude, did you hear the wind last night? Forty knots, I checked.”

It’s been a week since semester ended. A week since Wonwoo watched Soonyoung drag his suitcase down the street as he headed back to Changwon without him, an early shower dotting the shoulders of his t-shirt. A week since he put his hand on Wonwoo’s shoulder in the dorm building entrance and said, “Call me if you… Just, call me.”

He’s staring out the window at that same street when Junhui from down the hall says, “Hey, do you think it’ll rain today?”

Wonwoo blinks. Specks of dust on the windowpane come into focus, the street behind it goes blurry. He looks over his shoulder. Junhui is leaning against the kitchen counter, hands curled around the edges. There’s a mug a few inches from his right hand, steam spiralling upward.

“I…” Wonwoo turns back to the window. The sky is pearly and indecipherable. “I don’t know.”

They are the only two people in the shared lounge, and two of the only six people on this floor. It’s something Wonwoo didn’t think of when he decided to take summer classes, this silence. How it would feel to live in a barely inhabited building, like he’s one of few functioning alveoli in a diseased lung.

Junhui laughs. “At least you’re not the only one.”

Wonwoo is staring down at the windowsill, gaze latched onto a little chip in the paint. When he turns to face Junhui one of the hands that was curled around the bench is holding his phone, and he’s smiling.

“Forecast says fifty percent chance of rain.” Junhui laughs again, softly, like a flame catching on tinder. “They don’t know either.”

Wonwoo stares at Junhui. Junhui stares down at his phone. Wonwoo can tell the exact moment the page loads from the way the glow printed on his thumb changes color. A curve of hair slips out from behind his ear and falls over his face. It’s black, like his t-shirt.

“Hey,” Wonwoo asks, “have we met before?”

Junhui looks up. The reflection of his phone is caught as a glow at the base of his irises. From across the room his eyes look black too. “Before today?” He scratches the below his ear with his thumb, phone still in hand, his mouth twisted into a half-smile. “Damn, am I that forgettable?”

“Yeah,” Wonwoo says, “wait, no you’re not– I meant yes, before today but…” Junhui tilts his head, waiting. The lock of hair settles like a watercolor brushstroke along the gradient of his cheek. “Never mind.”

In Wonwoo’s dreams that night there is a dragon corkscrewing from black clouds like an unearthly ribbon of sky, scales dazzling and glacier-blue. There is a woman in a lilac sundress who can fly, and in her hands a book with a beating heart, and below them a raging sea, and within it those _eyes_ –

Footsteps in the hall outside. Pale sunlight edges through a crack in the curtains and paints a stripe on the opposite wall. Wonwoo pushes up onto his elbows in bed, listening. The footsteps recede but the voice carries; someone is singing softly, a song Wonwoo might have heard once before.

 

 

 

 

[ _Don’t forget_ , edited four months ago]

_Your name is Jeon Wonwoo. You’re twenty-one and you were born in Changwon, where your parents were born and met, and their parents too. They all worked very hard to give you the life you have and you’re very thankful. You have a younger brother and your best friend is Kwon Soonyoung, who grew up with you in Changwon._

_You want to be a writer one day. You go to university in Seoul where you made some other friends (Kim Mingyu, Joshua Hong, Lee Jihoon). You had a girlfriend but things didn’t work out._

_You hate seafood. You like to read and you’re a pretty good singer and your favorite season is winter._

_Don’t forget._

 

 

 

 

Wonwoo’s summer classes begin but the workload is light compared to what he’s used to during semesters. In his free time he loiters at the record shop where Jihoon works and opens blank documents on his laptop to stare at the blinking cursor.

One day he meets Joshua at his place on his afternoon off. He’s not back in the States for the summer because he’s landed a job as an au pair for some obscenely rich people that want their children to absorb his pristine Californian accent.

“You look like you’ve been through a washing machine with a set of watercolors,” Wonwoo tells Joshua as he lets him in. Every exposed inch of his arms is peppered with colorful marker lines, as well as his gray t-shirt.

“Thanks,” Joshua says pleasantly. His hair is messy like he’s just woken up from a nap. “We’ll see who’s laughing when I’ve got no college debt.”

They sit on the living room floor with the menus to a few different delivery places. Wonwoo wants black-bean noodles and Joshua’s leaning toward chicken.

“Is Jeonghan here?” Wonwoo asks. “He can tie-break.” Jeonghan is Joshua’s friend from university that he’s been sharing this apartment with for the past six months. Wonwoo’s only met him a handful of times but he freaks him out a little, in a morally ambiguous spymaster kind of way.

Joshua rolls one of his shoulders, wincing. “Nope, at work.”

Eventually they decide on noodles; or rather, Joshua concedes because he’s a really good guy. After placing the order he fishes two cans of coke out of the fridge. He cracks his open, takes a gulp and then holds it against his chest, looking thoughtful. “You been writing lately?”

Wonwoo fiddles with the tab of his can, pushing it back and forth until it snaps off. “Sort of.”

Joshua laughs. “No, in other words.”

“I’ve got an idea,” Wonwoo says, defensive. “I just keep getting stuck.”

“What’s the idea?” Joshua himself doesn’t write, but he probably reads more than Wonwoo does and he’s not even a literature student. The handful of short pieces Wonwoo’s had published in local literary magazines would never have made it beyond draft-stage if it weren’t for Joshua editing them in between his comp-sci assignments.

“Rain,” Wonwoo says, and realizes he’s been staring out the window. He coughs and looks down at his lap. “Well, that’s how it starts. I’m not sure what happens next.”

Joshua leans his head back to rest on the seat of the couch. Wonwoo notices a stripe of forest green marker beneath his ear he’d missed earlier. “Sounds like you’re doing that thing again where you think so much you’ve got no words left to write.”

“Probably,” Wonwoo admits. Joshua sometimes looks at him like– like he’s waiting for Wonwoo to burst into tears or something. He’s doing it right now and it makes Wonwoo feel weird. “It’s fine, I’ll work it out.”

Joshua goes silent, like he’s debating whether to say something else. He’s hands down the nicest guy Wonwoo knows, which is why he feels so guilty that at moments like this he really misses Soonyoung.

The doorbell rings just as Joshua begins to speak again. He places his can on the ground and gets up to answer it without another word.

 

 

 

 

Wonwoo considers himself a fairly objective person, and objectively he thinks he’s pretty funny.

There’s a joke he’s been working on for some time now. He hasn’t told it yet because, as any truly funny person knows, the crux of a joke is in the delivery, and the delivery is in the timing. It goes like this:

A writer walks into a bar. The bartender asks what he’d like to drink and the writer replies that he likes whiskey. He’ll have whatever she recommends, neat. The bartender pours him a whiskey.

The writer drinks it all and once he’s finished says, “God, I hate whiskey.”

The bartender asks, “Then why’d you say you liked it?”

To which the writer replies, “I lied.”

Next he tells the bartender he likes beer. He’ll have whatever beer the bartender recommends, so she pours him a glass of an ale they have on tap and slides to him.

The writer drinks it all and says, “God, I hate beer.”

The bartender asks, “Why do you keep lying?”

To which the writer replies, “All writers are liars, and all people are writers. I’m just more honest about it than most.”

He asks next for a glass of water. The bartender fills his empty glass with tap water and returns it to him.

“You can’t be about to say you hate water,” she says. “No one hates water.”

The writer drains the glass, places it back on the bar and says, “I do. I fucking hate water.”

“Then you’re lying,” the bartender says.

“Am I?” the writer asks.

Wonwoo’s not sure quite how the punchline goes yet but by that point he’s the only one laughing anyway, and that isn’t funny at all.

 

 

 

 

Wonwoo likes the quiet but he doesn’t like silence. Even though it’s not a big distinction it’s an important one, like a sentence where the rhythm is a single beat off or the one percent between a pass and a fail.

Over summer the student dormitories are silent. Junhui, on the other hand, is plain old quiet.

“You’re a homophone,” Wonwoo tells Junhui one evening. They’re in the shared lounge, sitting on couches at right-angles to one another.

“What did you just call me, Jeon?” Junhui says, glancing up from his laptop where it balances on his thighs. The glow of it tints his face shades of blue and white, like Wonwoo’s looking at him through liters of water. “Come over here and say it again, I dare you.”

If it were Soonyoung he might, but Wonwoo’s pretty certain Junhui could kick his ass in three seconds flat.

“Words that sound the same but mean different things,” Wonwoo says instead, one hand resting protectively over his laptop in case Junhui decides to get up and kick his ass anyway. “Your name’s one.”

Junhui taps a finger against his keyboard, thinking. “June?” he asks after a moment. “As in, this month?”

“Exactly,” Wonwoo says. Once he gets through the language barrier, Junhui is pretty quick.

“Huh.” The sun is just setting and Wonwoo is starving; they’ll go out and find something to eat soon. “Does that mean anything?”

“Probably not,” Wonwoo admits. “Probably just a coincidence.”

Probably.

 

 

 

 

[ _if something burns_ , last edited Thursday 2:14am]

_It’s not that I want to burn down a library. I’m not a violent guy, or one of those people who gets off on setting fire to shit. I don’t even smoke._

_But imagine this: you’re looking at the earth from above. Far, far above. So far that you’re not sure if it’s huge or you are. There’s a weapon in your hand: a machine gun perhaps, or a hand grenade, or maybe Atlas is holding it up and you only have your fists._

_Imagine pulling the trigger, or yanking out the pin, or kicking Atlas square in the nuts. Imagine having that power. Like I said, I’m not a violent guy. I imagine though, that that’s what it might feel like to kill a person._

_They’re not that different when you think about it: worlds, people, books._

_It’s not that I want to burn down a library. But what about just one book? A book no one was reading. A book no one would ever read. One that only the author knew existed._

_Who’s to say I haven’t?_

 

 

 

 

This restaurant is a respectable place to order a meal during daylight hours and early evening, but after eight pm the bar opens and the only people here are salarymen and college students. People come in groups and sit at tables, leaving the bar itself mostly free. It’s near a big university residence, so everyone knows everyone and Wonwoo knows no one except for Minkyung, one of the bartenders.

“Hey,” she says, sidling over to where Wonwoo’s sliding into the stool closest to the wall. “Come to drown your sorrows?”

It’s a Thursday and the place is a little under half-full. Wonwoo doesn’t need to raise his voice to be heard. “When have I ever done that?”

“You’re right,” she says, “usually you just sit there and philosophize into your beer.” Wonwoo pretends to get back out of his seat and head for the door. Minkyung laughs and puts down the glass she’s drying to reach half-heartedly across the bar. “Sit down, Socrates. Maybe you can drown my sorrows instead.”

She picks the glass back up and inclines her head. Wonwoo leans around her to see a guy in his early thirties wearing a collared shirt. He’s alone, lounging against the bar in a way that screams douchebag, and he keeps glancing up at Minkyung’s back.

“Oh man.” Wonwoo settles back into his seat as Minkyung rolls her eyes. “I’ll walk you home after closing?” he offers, even though he once saw her almost break a guy’s wrist for getting too handsy.

Minkyung smiles as she steps away to serve a new group of customers. “Thanks, oppa.”

Wonwoo doesn’t hate many things. Seafood is the undisputed number one and second place is clichés, which is why it pains Wonwoo to admit that maybe he comes to this particular bar because he likes to shoot the shit with the bartender over a drink or two.

It’s not even drowning his sorrows, as Minkyung put it, firstly because Wonwoo barely drinks and second because Wonwoo doesn’t have sorrows to drown. It’s just– nice, to talk to someone who doesn’t know any of his friends or family or classmates. He doesn’t have to worry about saying something he doesn’t mean, or saying something he _does_ mean but didn’t ever mean to say, and Minkyung is smart and funny and not a little shit which is more than can be said for most of his friends.

“I finish at midnight,” Minkyung says, drifting back over to him as she prepares the table’s drinks. She frowns as she distributes ice cubes into half a dozen glasses. “I think they forecast rain for tonight.”

She makes double of one of the orders and slides the second to Wonwoo. He’s not sure what it is but he trusts that it’ll be good.

“It’s all right,” Wonwoo says, taking a sip. He tastes sugar syrup, and below that vodka and bitters. Beneath the bar he taps his ankle against the wooden handle propped against his stool as if to reassure himself that it’s there. “I brought my umbrella.”

 

 

 

 

Sooyoung’s hair was short when she and Wonwoo first met through mutual friends, not even long enough to touch her shoulders. When she broke up with him seven months later the tips just brushed the curve of her breasts. Wonwoo knew this because that’s where he fixed his eyes when she said, “We need to stop this, don’t we?”

Her arms were crossed as she sat opposite him at the table in Joshua’s dining room. It was a front, Wonwoo knew. She wasn’t nearly as mean as she liked people to think.

“It’s like,” she continued, voice not hard but not gentle either, “you’re not even interested.” The knit in her sweater was loose and through it Wonwoo could see the outline of her firetruck red bra. He wasn’t sure if it was on purpose or not. Park Sooyoung was a mystery to a lot of people.

“Actually no, that’s not it,” she said, pursing her lips. “You’re interested, but you’re just not…” The wind must cut through it something fierce. It’d been getting colder. Wonwoo made a mental note to give Sooyoung his jacket when they were outside before he remembered that she wasn’t his girlfriend anymore.

“Not here,” Sooyoung finished. “You’re not here.” She wouldn’t cry in front of him. She’d cry later, once she was alone. Wonwoo probably wouldn’t cry at all. “Like you’re asleep or something. A ghost.”

She uncrossed her arms to toss her hair back over her shoulder, then recrossed them. Wonwoo blinked and looked up at her face. Let himself just look, for a few moments. She really was beautiful.

“Yeah,” Wonwoo said finally, placing both palms flat on the table and pushing to his feet. “Yeah, you’re right.”

 

 

 

 

“Hey,” Junhui says one Saturday morning. “Do you wanna see where I make the storms?”

Wonwoo looks up from his phone. “Where you…”

“Where I make the storms,” Junhui repeats, voice level. Wonwoo stares at him. Junhui stares back. On the street outside a car passes by. The noise of the engine builds, peaks, and then recedes, like a wave over the shore.

“Sure,” Wonwoo says finally. He stands up and slips his phone into the back pocket of his jeans. “Why the fuck not?”

“Oh,” he says, when they get off the subway at Boramae station and Junhui begins walking south. “The Meteorological Administration?”

Junhui looks back at him. He’s not laughing, but he looks like he wants to. “Of course,” he says, “where else?”

“You’re a meteorologist?” Wonwoo had known Junhui was doing an internship over the summer, that he spoke Korean because studied here for a few years in high school and that he was in the faculty of sciences, but nothing more specific.

“Well right now I’m just an Environmental Sciences student with ambition and good looks,” Junhui says. “But ask me again this time next year.”

The neighbourhood is sedate and residential but not comatose; they pass several people with grocery bags or on bicycles, and a group of kids throwing around a soccer ball. Junhui is quiet as he walks, eyes fixed to the sky. It’s untouched cerulean today, and the sun is making Wonwoo sweat under his t-shirt.

The buildings beside Wonwoo give way to a school oval. It’s small enough that he can see in the windows of the school building on the other side of it, into the dark classrooms where the chairs are stacked on the desks and the blackboards are dusted clean.

“How come you’re in university residence if you’re interning at a government place?” Wonwoo asks. They turn a corner and the school disappears from sight.

“Oh,” Junhui says. “My supervisor is a professor at the university, she just uses the observatories and data and stuff at the Administration for her research. She managed to get me into university housing.”

Wonwoo has decided he likes Junhui’s accent. His consonants are soft and his vowels sway as his native tongue tries to slip into his Korean, like an exotic bird far from home looking for somewhere to roost.

“It’s just at the end of this road,” Junhui says, as they round a corner. “Opposite the sports center.” The building Junhui points out is multi-storey and the color of sand. “There’s a big radar observatory but we can’t see it from here. This way.”

Junhui leads him through a gate and cuts across the parking lot. There are garden beds on the inside of the fence with a only a few tall trees and the occasional flower bush. Wonwoo is distracted staring over his shoulder at all the bare earth and almost walks into Junhui when he stops in front of a heavy glass door.

“Are you sure I’m allowed to be here?” Wonwoo asks, as Junhui produces a card from his pocket and holds it against a sensor.

“No.” Junhui grins at him as the door beeps and he leans his weight against it to push it open. “That’s why we’re using the back entrance on a weekend.”

Junhui holds the door behind him and, after hesitating for a moment, Wonwoo follows him through. The corridor inside is cool and dark and quiet, lined on either side with office cubicles. The blinds are all closed so the only light comes from the doorway behind Wonwoo. The silence echoes when Junhui lets the door close behind him. It feels the way those empty classrooms had looked, a hypnotic absence of color and sound.

“There are a few different organizations that use this building,” Junhui says, starting down the corridor. His footfalls are sharp in the silence even though he’s wearing sneakers. “Some of them keep regular office hours, which is why it’s empty here at the moment.”

Junhui leads them deeper into the building, down corridors and up flights of stairs. They pass several people but no one stops them. On the third floor Junhui halts in a doorway and taps the frame with his knuckles to get the attention of the person inside.

“Really, Junhui?” comes a voice from within. “On a Saturday?” and Junhui laughs.

“Hi Seungcheol-hyung.” Junhui steps aside. “Yep, and I even brought a friend this time.”

The room is ringed with several idling desktop computers and a much larger one at the back with several monitors. Behind it is a guy maybe five years older than Wonwoo and Junhui, chair wheeled back and angled to face them.

He rests his elbow on the arm of the chair, rubbing his hairline. “You, my dude,” he tells Junhui seriously, “have got a problem.” His gaze shifts to Wonwoo. “Hi there,” he adds, “I’m Seungcheol.”

Junhui walks into the room and pulls out two chairs from behind the unused computers, angling one in Wonwoo’s direction.

“Wonwoo, nice to meet you,” he replies. He crosses the room to sit in the chair Junhui’s holding out for him, murmuring, ‘Thanks.”

“How are things looking?” Junhui asks, scooting closer to the monitor. Seungcheol swings around in his chair and pulls himself in using the desk.

“Not very exciting, I’m afraid,” Seungcheol says, clicking with the mouse and pulling up some charts that Wonwoo can’t even begin to understand.

“No way, really?” says Junhui. “I watched the radars last night, I was sure it’d storm this afternoon.”

Seungcheol clicks through another few screens. “Doesn’t look like it will. But hey, if you can predict something this multi-million dollar equipment can’t then good for you.”

Junhui leans over Seungcheol’s shoulder. “There,” he says, pointing at the screen. “Go back. That low pressure system. It’ll develop and hit Seoul in a few hours, I bet you.”

“It’s close enough, but it’s moving in the wrong direction. Unless there’s a sudden shift over all of Asia that bad boy’s heading to mainland China. It shouldn’t storm here until the end of the week.” Seungcheol grins over his shoulder. “You seriously wanna bet?”

Junhui sits back down in his chair and glances over at Wonwoo, smiling too. “Maybe not. There are too many witnesses, I have a reputation to uphold.”

Seungcheol shakes his head with a faint smile and says, “Weak.’ He leans in to another of the computer screens and clicks the mouse rapidly, distracted.

Junhui scoots closer to Wonwoo. “Sorry, I know it was weird of me to bring you here. It’s not boring you is it?”

“No,” Wonwoo says, “it’s cool.” The computers in the room give off a constant low hum and the air conditioner raises goosebumps on his forearms. The overhead fluorescents in the corridor are on but Seungcheol has turned them off in here, so the light comes from the line of windows on one wall and is clear and blue. Beyond the glass is Boramae Park. Wonwoo can see the people walking and children playing, but he can’t hear them. This, Wonwoo thinks, would be a very good place to write. “I think I like this kind of weird.”

A corner of Junhui’s mouth lifts. “That’s good.”

“Do you do this a lot?” he asks. He follows Junhui’s gaze to one of the monitors in front of Seungcheol. It’s a map of East Asia, over which shapes are superimposed, blinking every thirty seconds or so to update. “Come here to watch the radars?”

“I’m here three or four days a week anyway with Professor Choi,” Junhui says, eyes moving purposefully over the charts, seeing things Wonwoo can’t. “But yeah, most days.” Junhui stretches out his leg, toe almost tapping the corner of Seungcheol’s chair. “And some nights.”

Wonwoo looks at him. His eyes are not black from this close, but deep brown. The hair at the back of his neck curls gently from heat and sweat, and the skin at the bridge of his nose is peeling a little from sunburn.

“It’s the scale, right?” Wonwoo says. Junhui turns to look him, eyes questioning and bright. “Like, watching something as huge and unstoppable as the weather just reminds you how small you are.”

Junhui stares at him for a long moment, before finally saying, “Most people don’t like to feel small.” There’s something very thoughtful, almost expectant, in Junhui’s face.

Wonwoo says, “I think I do,” and Junhui’s expression deepens into a smile.

“I still don’t get it, though,” Wonwoo says, after they’ve left the Administration. They’re in a shopping center close to Boramae station, a sleepy single-story complex with a supermarket at the back, a pharmacy, a florist, a post office and a butcher, and a noodle shop and cafe sharing the front facade; the kind of place that feels closed even when it’s open. “You said you make the storms. Don’t you just watch them?”

They’re walking a slow lap of the supermarket. Junhui is holding a box of laundry detergent and a bag of tangerines and is now considering a Spiderman toothbrush.

“Watching, creating,” he says, “they’re kind of the same thing when you think about it.” He looks at the toothbrush for one more long moment before he puts it back.

Junhui pays and they drift toward the double doors at the entrance. On the way Junhui stops in front of the florist and bends at the waist to look at an arrangement of lilies in the window. “Why would they open a flower shop back here?” he asks Wonwoo. “The sunlight doesn’t reach this far, don’t the flowers die after a few days?”

Wonwoo looks at Junhui, then at the flowers, skipping the toe of his sneaker over the crack between the tiles. “I guess they just hope someone will come and take them home before that happens.”

Junhui makes a thoughtful noise. “I don’t see any UV lights in there, you must be right. Shit, that’s bleak.” He takes one more long look at the flowers then straightens up.

“What?” Wonwoo says. “You’re just going to leaf them here after that?”

Junhui stills for a moment, then groans. “I’m going to leave _you_ here.”

Wonwoo clutches his chest. “You’d really do that to our budding friendship?” he asks, and Junhui reaches into his shopping bag and throws a tangerine at him.

They’re on the subway back to the dorm, shoulders brushing, when Junhui suddenly laughs. A girl in a high school uniform sitting across from them looks up from her phone, then down again.

“Seungcheol-hyung just messaged me,” he says. His voice is low and barely cuts through the white noise of the train, but Wonwoo can still hear the laughter hidden in every note. “I should’ve taken the bet.”

Junhui walks quickly to the exit and takes the stairs two at a time as they head back up to street level.

“There,” he says, head tipped back, taking a few steps backward to get out of the flow of pedestrians moving in and out of the station. Wonwoo reaches the top of the stairs, and Junhui turns to him. “Those clouds there, they’re early stage cumulonimbus clouds—stormclouds.”

Wonwoo steps up alongside him, squinting. Only a few patches of blue sky remain, but the clouds are one indistinguishable mass of white. “I don’t see them.”

“They’re there, I promise. Sometimes you just need to–” Junhui moves behind Wonwoo and rests his hands on his shoulders, using them to rotate him a little to the right, “–look at things a little differently.”

He reaches around and holds his hand in front of Wonwoo’s left eye. His chest rests against Wonwoo’s shoulder blades, searing hot.

“Look,” he says, voice very close. “Up, left, more left– there. The ones that stretch up, like towers.”

Wonwoo blinks, and suddenly he can see them; a cluster of clouds superimposed upon the opalescent sky like an optical illusion that you can’t see until you can, and then you can’t stop seeing it.

“Oh,” Wonwoo says, “you’re right,” and Junhui steps away. It’s hot today, but Wonwoo suddenly feels cold.

“My guess is we have...” Junhui looks up and tilts his head. A column of muscle in his neck stands out. “Fifteen minutes before it starts fucking pouring.”

Even if Junhui hadn’t told him, Wonwoo would know it would rain soon. The air is heavy and damp and smells like earth and vegetation, even over the exhaust of the traffic. People keep glancing up at the sky as they pass in and out of the station. Wonwoo takes a deep breath and slides his hands into his jeans. “I don’t know, I kind of want to walk the long way home.”

Junhui’s smile is brilliant. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

 

 

 

 

On a Tuesday near the end of June Mingyu texts Wonwoo :( and nothing else, which is how he ends up on a train to Anyang at four in the afternoon.

“You really didn’t have to come, hyung,” Mingyu says, looking like a guilty labrador when he meets Wonwoo at the train station. “Or you could’ve at least taken the bus instead of three different trains. It passes right by where you live.”

“I hate buses,” Wonwoo says. “And of course I didn’t have to.”

“But–”

“Are we gonna stand here arguing or are you gonna take me to a pretentious artsy cafe?”

Mingyu does, which is perfect because Wonwoo is both pretentious and artsy. Their drinks haven’t even come before Mingyu spills the whole thing.

Mingyu’s girlfriend Jieqiong is spending the summer doing work experience at a huge multinational architectural firm in Seoul. She graduates in two years and they’ve already offered to hire her full time when she does.

“That’s great?” Wonwoo hedges.

Mingyu presses his lips together and folds his napkin in half, and then in half again. “They want her to work in the Beijing branch.”

“Oh.”

Mingyu keeps halving his napkin until it’s too thick to be folded again. “I always knew there was a chance she’d move back to China, but I guess before this I thought…” Mingyu takes his hand off the napkin and it springs open again, the folds making it sit up off the table like a mountainous relief. He frowns down at it. “I thought I’d at least have a chance.”

“It is two years away,” Wonwoo offers. “A lot can change in two years. She mightn’t even want to take it.”

Their drinks arrive. Mingyu pushes his napkin aside to make space and thanks the waitress as she places them down.

“But I don’t want to feel like we’re on a countdown or something for the next two years. That’d be the fucking worst.” Mingyu’s obviously upset, but the way he stirs his drink is gentle. “And this firm is a really big deal. I don’t want her to pass up this opportunity because of me, even if that’s what she chooses. She’s worked way too hard for that.”

Mingyu and Jieqiong have been together almost two years, since Jieqiong’s university orientation where he was running campus tours. He’s only twenty-one and she’s a year younger but Mingyu has never half-assed anything in his life and he certainly wouldn’t start with this.

“I’m not going to ask you what you’d do in my position, because I already know,” Mingyu says, bending down to lap the foam off his drink like an honest-to-god dog.

“What, really?”

“Mhm, you’re very predictable,” Mingyu says. “Predictable and way too nice.”

“I’m not nice.” Wonwoo breathes all the way in, then all the way out. “Shua-hyung is too nice. _You’re_ too nice.”

Mingyu leans back in his seat. He’s wearing a deep green collared shirt and slacks. He has no middle-ground fashion-wise; he either dresses up or dresses like he’s been living in a garbage tip for a week. “They’re different kinds of nice. Shua-hyung is nice to everyone all the time, but he’s also practical about it.”

“You’re saying I’m impractical?” Wonwoo asks. Mingyu starts tearing his napkin into tiny little squares. “Wait, and that I’m also not nice all the time?”

“Yeah,” Mingyu says, “that’s exactly it. Like, say I called you at two am and told you I was stranded on the highway with no way to get home. You’d laugh and hang up on me, then pull up in front of me twenty minutes later. And only when I opened the door would I realize you’re bleeding profusely from a stab-wound to the leg, and you’d say something awful like _Yeah, I couldn’t press the brake and almost made a truck jackknife on the way here, haha,_ and then pass out in a pool of your own blood.”

A long silence.

“Jesus christ,” Wonwoo says. The bell above the door of the café dings as a group of high school girls leave. “Is it too early to go get drunk on a Tuesday?”

Mingyu snorts. “Probably.” He starts collecting the napkin squares into a little pile, a papery snowdrift in the middle of summer. “But in a few hours it won’t be.”

 

 

 

 

There’s one story Wonwoo will never tell, because telling a story is what makes it real.

It’s about his mother. There’s this photo of her and his father some months after they married on the bookshelf in the living room. In it she’s seated on a park bench, squinting against the sun but beaming. His father stands behind her with a hand on her shoulder, caught between expressions—not quite smiling but almost there. She’s wearing a pale purple dress.

It’s always this version of her that Wonwoo sees when this story plays out in his mind. She’s twenty-five and squinting and beautiful in her lilac sundress. Seoul in December is far too cold for a dress like this—a discordant note in the harmony of the story, like a bush bearing a dozen pristine flowers out of season. If Wonwoo were writing it for real Joshua would make him edit that part out.

Still, there she is in her pretty cotton dress, walking with her best friend from high school down a quiet street in Seoul. She’s wheeling her suitcase behind her; she was only visiting for the weekend, and now she’s headed to the bus terminal to go back to Changwon where her husband is waiting.

The details get hazy here: perhaps she decides to cross the road before the corner, or an elderly couple are walking on the path and she and her friend part to let them pass, or she gets too caught up in conversation and forgets to look where she’s walking. Whatever the reason, Wonwoo’s mother steps on the edge of the curb, her weight falls wrongly, her foot twists, and she breaks her ankle.

She finds this out three hours later at the hospital. Wonwoo’s father drives up to Seoul after her friend calls him. It takes him four hours to arrive because of an accident on the highway, which is one hour after they’ve also told her that she’s eight weeks pregnant.

It is after another sixteen hours, when she wakes up the following morning in Seoul, that she finds out she should be dead. The bus she was supposed to take back to Changwon hit a guardrail while crossing a bridge and flipped over the edge. Investigators suspect the driver fell asleep at the wheel. The crossing was at the mouth of a river where the water wasn’t very deep, but the currents were strong and swept the bus out to sea in a matter of minutes. None of the nineteen people aboard survived.

Wonwoo doesn’t remember from whom he learned this story. Logically he knows someone had to tell him, but deep down he thinks it might be something he was born knowing, the way he knows his mother’s voice and the lines on his own palms.

The way he _should_ know the sound of his own heartbeat except that, when Wonwoo closes his eyes, all he can hear is the ocean.

 

 

 

 

On the day Soonyoung left for Changwon it rained and just like that, summer arrived.

Wonwoo sat behind his laptop trying to write out the mess in his head for an hour, and when that didn’t work he closed it, put on his sneakers and grabbed the umbrella propped up beside the door.

By then the morning shower had swelled into a storm. The wind swept the rain into him even beneath the umbrella and five minutes from home he was shivering and dripping.

There was someone else shivering and dripping at the bus shelter ahead, dressed in all black. Wonwoo suddenly saw the scene with the kind of clarity that usually only came after hours of writing it into shape.

Two people alone on a narrow street. All was still except the air, through which rain fell like tiny shards of sky. A car passed by, and the noise the tires made on the wet road was like something from another world. In that world there were billions of people but in this one there were only two, and one old black umbrella.

He still hasn’t found the word for that feeling, and Wonwoo does not often find himself without words. In that moment though, he could feel whatever it was as distinctly as the raindrops on his skin.

Wonwoo stepped beneath the bus shelter and collapsed his umbrella. Gingerly, he sat down on the bench at the far end from the other person. The shelter was better than his umbrella but errant raindrops still found his skin, surging whenever the wind gusted.

The person didn’t speak and neither did Wonwoo. Big droplets of water fell from the edge of the roof. Wonwoo watched them hit the pavement and disintegrate, and then he watched the rain across the street. From far away he couldn’t see individual drops, only the rippling sheen of water covering the sidewalk and reflecting the gray sky.

They sat there for a long time, soaked through and trembling.

Finally, a bus pulled onto the street. The person on the other end of the bench stood. Wonwoo stared down at his lap; he had the distinct feeling the person in black was looking at him, but he refused to look back.

The bus lurched to a stop in front of them, engine deafening, and with it the world of billions flooded back into this one. Wonwoo continued to stare down at his feet.

Only when the sound of the engine had faded into the distance did Wonwoo look up. It was quiet, and he was cold and alone except for the rain.

When he reached down to pick up his umbrella he noticed light glinting off of something. A corner of the nylon had torn free from the spoke that stretched it into shape, like flesh from bone. His hand stopped and he sat there for another minute, for two, staring.

When Wonwoo reached the record shop Jihoon wasn’t curled up in his usual seat behind the counter. Instead it was Jonghyun, one of the trio of late twenty-something musicians who pitched in together to buy this record store from the ahjussi who opened it several decades ago. Privately Wonwoo thought he was wickedly cool; he ghost-composed a bunch of songs over the years that charted in the top ten, always played weird shit on the big vintage gramophone during his shift and sometimes brought his little sausage dog to work. Jihoon had a serious case of hero-worship going on that he dealt with in the same way he dealt with anything vaguely feelings related: exclusively in piano ballad form.

“Hey there, Wonwoo,” Jonghyun said, glancing up from his magazine. His shirt had no sleeves. “Suddenly feels like summer today, right?”

“Yeah,” Wonwoo said, pausing in the doorway to close his umbrella and prop it beside the door. He looked at it for a moment, stray raindrops shimmering down the black surface of it. The storm lashed against the windows, making the glass shiver.

“Jihoon’ll be here in an hour or so,” Jonghyun said as he came up to the counter, then, “Whoa, you look like a guy with some stuff on his mind.”

“Yeah,” Wonwoo said again, and if he was going to say anything else it got lost somewhere amongst the clouds conspiring far overhead.

“You wanna come with next time I get a tattoo? That always clears my head.” Jonghyun pushed out his lower lip thoughtfully. “Or you could get laid. Take your pick.”

Jonghyun’s answer to everything seemed to be music, tattoos and sex. As much fun as it would be to watch Jihoon silently seethe with jealousy for the rest of eternity if Wonwoo ended up with a matching tattoo with _his_ Jonghyun-hyung, Wonwoo could only wish it were that simple.

“Actually,” he said, running a hand through his dripping hair, “do you have a pen and paper I can use?”

 

 

 

 

“How’s your vocabulary today?” Wonwoo asks, bumping Joshua with his shoulder as they walk.

“In English?” he says. “Magnificent. In Korean, pretty terrible. Why?”

“There’s this word I’ve been looking for.” Wonwoo thinks, lips thinning into a line. “Almost a synonym for recognition, but not exact. Like you…” Wonwoo forgets to look where he’s walking, and Joshua has to tug him by the elbow out of the way of an oncoming cyclist. “Thanks. Like, you know someone’s the same as you without even meeting them properly.”

“Kinship?” Joshua suggests.

“Almost.” They turn the corner and it sends the sunlight directly into their eyes. Wonwoo looks at his feet until they adjust. “It’s less… less about togetherness though, more just an absence of loneliness.”

“Then maybe that’s what it is.” Joshua is not looking down, Wonwoo can see that from the corner of his eye. “Sometimes there isn’t a word, you know?”

Wonwoo’s left foot lands on a crack every time, his right never. “An absence of loneliness,” he echoes, trying it out. As usual, Joshua’s right.

 

 

 

 

Junhui returns to the dorm one day near the start of July with a deck of tarot cards.

“A nice old lady sold them to me in this weird little shop I’d never noticed before,” he says, leaning against Wonwoo’s doorway.

Wonwoo looks up from his laptop. “Every single part of that sentence is a red flag. Have you never seen a horror movie?”

Junhui just snorts and sits across from Wonwoo on his bed. “Do you want to go first or should I?”

The very first card Wonwoo draws is Death, to which Junhui only laughs.

“Are you not afraid of death?” Wonwoo asks, a little bit fascinated. If Junhui were a book Wonwoo wouldn’t be able to put him down.

“No,” he says simply. “Are you?”

Wonwoo rubs his thumb over the word on his card, printed in English. “My ex-girlfriend broke up with me because she said it was like dating a ghost.”

Wonwoo hadn’t even told Soonyoung about that, just let him meet him by the river with bottles of soju and a hug. Junhui shuffles further onto the bed so he can lean his back against the wall. “That’s rough.”

“But she was right,” Wonwoo says, “almost.”

Junhui does not laugh at this. “You think you’re a ghost?” he asks instead, gaze level.

“A ghost is when someone doesn’t die when they should’ve.” Wonwoo flips the card over and traces the design on the back with his fingertip. “I think I’m the opposite. I was born when I shouldn’t have been.”

There is a long pause. It is hot and humid today, and the air conditioning hums into the silence. “Do you want to know what I think?” Junhui asks finally.

“Yes,” Wonwoo says.

“I think,” Junhui begins, unfolding the pamphlet that came in the box with the cards, “that fate is a load of shit. People aren’t skies. You can’t predict them like you can predict weather, and even forecasts are sometimes wrong– hey,” he says, glancing up at Wonwoo and then back down, “this is in Korean. Listen: The Death card does not necessarily, or even usually, indicate physical death. This card simply indicates transformation and change. The more accepting you can be of change, and the less you try to control it the better. The energy of this time is not just change or destruction; it is change or destruction followed by renewal.” Junhui stops reading. “That’s cool. It’s like a fire that allows parts of the forest to regrow.”

“Or,” Wonwoo says, eyes hyper-focused on the threads of his bedspread and not seeing much else, “a hurricane.”

The movement of the sun strikes the perfect angle to allow a tiny strip of sunlight to slip in through the window, passing through Wonwoo’s line of vision. He blinks, following it with his eyes. At one end it slices across Wonwoo’s lap, at the other Junhui’s ankle.

“You’re very smart,” Wonwoo says finally, looking up at Junhui. “Has anyone ever told you that?”

“Just you,” Junhui says. He holds the deck out to Wonwoo.

Wonwoo reaches out and flips a card face up onto the bed. Staring up at them, struck through with a thread of sunlight, are the serene faces of The Lovers.

 

 

 

 

How to create a storm, according to Wen Junhui:

On a fine day, gain access to a national weather organization, such as the Korean Meteorological Administration. Use one of the authorized computers to edit the forecast webpages available to the public.

(“Seungcheol would never let you do that,” Wonwoo says. “He’d tackle you out of the chair and pin you to the floor with his Olympic wrestler thighs.”

“Okay, I’ll add in an extra step,” says Junhui. His icecream is melting in rivulets down the cone, but he notices and licks it before Wonwoo can tell him. “Lure Choi Seungcheol into a supply closet like you’re in an episode of the fucking Looney Tunes.”

“And how do you plan to do that?” Wonwoo asks. The sun is hot against his arms and the back of his neck, but his lips are cold and taste like sugar.

“I’ll tell him Im Nayoung has a thing for dudes who smell like bleach.” Behind Junhui the river glitters like it’s inlaid with gems. “Lock the door behind him. There, problem solved.”)

Manually change the forecast from clear skies to storms. Add in a hurricane warning for good measure. Congratulations, you’ve successfully created a storm.

(“But you haven’t,” Wonwoo says. “There won’t be a storm just because you say there will.”

“How many people do you think check that site every minute?” Junhui replies. “What about every hour? It must be thousands, right?”

“Probably. So?”

“So until the storm that you’ve forecast doesn’t arrive it’ll be real for them. We accept things as real all the time even if we can’t see them with our own eyes. Do you get what I mean?”

“I think so,” Wonwoo says slowly. He can feel the skin on the tips of his ears burning, so he nudges Junhui with his elbow to walk toward a bench beneath the shade of a tree. “You could do it in reverse too. Make a real storm disappear.”

“See, you _do_ get it,” Junhui says, beaming.

“Yeah,” he murmurs, as they step into the shade. All over Wonwoo feels cold. “I do.”)

 

 

 

 

When Wonwoo pushes open the door and scans the store he finds Jihoon in one of the armchairs nestled between the rows of records. He must not be on shift yet, or else just finished. The door to the office is open, and Wonwoo can hear Jonghyun singing along to the record that’s playing.

He’s bent over his laptop with one earphone in, and maybe this is where Wonwoo makes his mistake. He should notice the three empty coffee cups lined up on the shelf behind him or the frustrated slant of his mouth, but he doesn’t.

“Hey,” Wonwoo says, weaving in between the aisles. “How are the love songs to Jonghyun-hyung coming along?”

Jihoon’s expression turns to stone. “They’re _not_ love songs,” he snaps and Wonwoo can’t help it, he flinches. “Why the fuck would I ever want to–”

He tugs out his earphone, gets a good look at Wonwoo’s face and deflates at once. “Shit,” he says, “shit, shit. Wonwoo–”

“Don’t,” Wonwoo says. He swallows hard. This shouldn’t be happening. Wonwoo should be laughing this off. Why can't he laugh this off? “Don’t worry about it.”

Jihoon’s face twists. “I didn’t mean–”

“I know what you meant. You’re right.” Wonwoo feels deadly calm, like a disappeared storm. “I was just messing around, sorry.”

“Jesus christ.” Jihoon tears a hand through his hair. “Don’t apologize, fuck, don’t–”

“Actually, I just remembered something I need to do,” Wonwoo says, backing away. He thinks of clear blue skies. He thinks of pools of water that are as still as graves. “I’ll see you later.”

Wonwoo turns and walks toward the door. Jihoon calls his name once, twice, but doesn’t follow, and then Wonwoo’s outside in the open air. The sky might be gray or it might be blue.

He starts to walk away. It’s only once he realizes that he’s pulled out his phone and called Junhui that his hands begin to shake.

“Fuck,” Wonwoo whispers, staring down at his phone. The call goes through. He hears Junhui answer, tinny and far away. “Fuck.”

A pause from the other end of the line. Junhui’s tiny voice says his name. Wonwoo’s heart lurches into his throat. He hangs up and shoves his phone into his back pocket.

Wonwoo feels– afraid. He feels afraid but the kind of fear that hits retrospectively, like seeing the shark infested waters sign on shore when you’re already fifty meters out and treading water.

The wind presses the fabric of his t-shirt into his chest, which is how he realizes he is running.

The sky over Seoul shudders and opens up.

 

 

 

 

It’s busy tonight, but Minkyung pushes a drink across the bar at him as soon as he sits down. “Drink that,” she says, patting the back of his hand, eyes sympathetic, “and give me half an hour. Then we’ll talk.”

 

 

 

 

[ _Don’t forget_ , edited three minutes ago]

_Your name is Jeon Wonwoo. You’re twenty-one and your hometown is Changwon, where your parents were born and met, and their parents too. They all worked very hard to give you the life you have and you’re very thankful. Changwon is a small city and in the right circles everyone knows everything. Changwon is also not America, or even Seoul. You cannot_

_You have a younger brother and your best friend is Kwon Soonyoung even though you haven’t spoken to him in_

_You want to be a writer one day. You go to university in Seoul where you made some other friends (Kim Mingyu, Joshua Hong,_

_You had a girlfriend but things didn’t work out because_

_You live on the same floor as Wen Junhui and you don’t think you’ve ever met anyone so_

_He sometimes takes you to the Meteorological Administration and you every time you don’t want to leave. Now you can’t look at the sky without_

_You hate seafood. You like to read and you’re a pretty good singer and your favorite season is winter but the summer rain makes you want to_

_Don’t forget._

_Don’t forget._

_Don’t  
_

 

 

 

 

“I have a question,” Wonwoo says, without turning. Behind him the convenience store fridge slams shut.

“Yeah?” Mingyu asks, brushing by him with two bottles of blue Gatorade tucked under his arm.

“Do you ever feel like you imagine things in the rain?”

Wonwoo can hear the frown in Mingyu’s voice. “Things like what?”

“Things like…”

Raindrops inch down the glass and blur the street outside: smudge the traffic into blots of bright red tail-lights and fracture the sidewalk into cryptic gray movement until Wonwoo can’t make out much of anything at all.

Things like people.

(Joshua’s voice: _You always have had a gift for telling stories, Wonwoo._ )

 

 

 

 

Wonwoo’s brother calls him on a Wednesday to tell him he and his girlfriend are driving up to Seoul that weekend for a concert.

“It’s my birthday on Saturday,” Wonwoo says. “I was going to come back home for a day or two.”

“I know it is, hyung,” Bohyuk says. “You can take the car if you want. You don’t mind, do you?”

After he hangs up, Junhui looks up from his novel. “It’s your birthday?”

“Yeah,” Wonwoo says, staring down at his phone. “I’m going back to Changwon.” The call time reads forty-five seconds. “Hey,” Wonwoo says, with a rush of something like recklessness, “do you want to come with me?”

Which is how Wonwoo ends up standing on the sidewalk on a Saturday morning with Bohyuk, his girlfriend and Junhui.

“Here, hyung,” Bohyuk says, handing over the keys. “I filled the gas tank up all the way. Happy birthday.”

Wonwoo unlocks the car with the remote. The lights flash. Junhui holds out his hand for Wonwoo’s backpack, and Wonwoo shrugs it off and gives it to him.

“I thought I knew all your friends,” Bohyuk says, edging closer to Wonwoo as Junhui walks a little away from them to toss their bags into the backseat.

“We live in the same building,” Wonwoo says. “We’ve only spoken a few times, but he hasn’t been in Korea long. I thought it’d be nice for him to see more than Seoul.” Body halfway out of the car, Junhui chokes and starts coughing. “Be nice to him, he’s a bit shy,” Wonwoo adds for good measure.

“Oh,” Bohyuk says, “okay. Cool.”

Junhui slams the door and walks back over to them, smile wide and guileless.

“Ready to go?” Wonwoo asks, and Junhui nods.

“I hope you guys have a lovely time, drive safely,” Bohyuk’s girlfriend tells them with her eyes on Junhui, voice warm. Junhui’s smile doesn’t falter.

It’s only once they’ve climbed into the front seats that Wonwoo starts laughing. Junhui punches his shoulder.

“‘Be nice to him’? You little–” Junhui hits him again. “I think I liked it better when you were avoiding me.”

Wonwoo starts the car and watches a cyclist pass them in his wing mirror. “I wasn’t avoiding you,” he says, indicating and pulling out onto the street. “Or maybe I was, but not because I didn’t want to talk to you.”

Junhui hums. “It’s fine.” He leans forward to look for a radio station. “How long does this drive take again?”

“About four hours,” Wonwoo says. “Get comfortable.”

Junhui settles back in his seat, a static black and gray shadow at the edge of Wonwoo’s vision. Wonwoo is hit by a wave of deja vu. Everything outside the car whips by, a world entirely apart from this one.

 

 

 

 

Junhui is much taller than Wonwoo’s parents. He doesn’t know why, but something about the image of him standing in the kitchen of Wonwoo’s childhood home towering over both his mother and father imprints itself on his memory.

“You boys might have to share Wonwoo’s bedroom,” his mother says. “You know how Bohyuk gets about people in his room.”

“I know, mom.” Wonwoo glances at Junhui. She’s already started cooking some of his favorite dishes and it smells so much like home. “It’s fine, we can share.”

Junhui looks even taller in Wonwoo’s bedroom and when he folds up his long legs to sit cross-legged against the wall it only makes it worse. Wonwoo is used to seeing an elementary-school aged Bohyuk or a teenaged Soonyoung in here. They were boys; Junhui is a man. The whole room seems to cower to accommodate that, like a doll’s house rather than a person’s.

“The roof is leaking,” Junhui tells him, head tipped all the way back to look at where the wall meets the ceiling above him.

Wonwoo’s father borrows their neighbour’s silicon gun to patch up the cracks in the plaster. “A lot of apartment buildings just aren’t built to last,” he says, handing the gun to Junhui and climbing down off the step-ladder. Junhui probably could’ve reached just by standing on his toes and stretching his arm up, but in Wonwoo’s house things have always been done a certain way. “They start to fall apart after a decade or two. That’s just how it is.”

 

 

 

 

Soonyoung turns up on the doorstep fifteen minutes after Wonwoo and Junhui arrive.

“Look what the cat dragged in,” Wonwoo says when he answers the door, as though he hadn’t messaged to tell him he was home thirty seconds after walking in the door.

Soonyoung’s eyes narrow. “Get out of the way, Mrs. Jeon’s son. I’m here to visit her.” He pushes past Wonwoo into the kitchen and hugs Wonwoo’s mother, smile sunny. Junhui walks out from the bedroom. “And you too, whoever you are,” Soonyoung says, without missing a beat. He crosses the room and hugs a bewildered Junhui too. “I’m here for everyone in this house except Jeon Wonwoo.”

Junhui is infallibly nice and Soonyoung is hilarious, so naturally they get along like a house on fire after introductions. Despite his theatrics Soonyoung really is there to see Wonwoo, betrayed by the present in his backpack; a top-grade moleskin journal.

“Aw, you _do_ love me,” Wonwoo says, throwing his arms around Soonyoung in what is more a tackle than a hug. Not to be outdone, Soonyoung fights back and it devolves into a wrestling match on the floor of Wonwoo’s bedroom. Junhui leans against the wall with his phone camera trained on them, grinning.

Once it’s out of their system and they’re lying on their backs panting, Soonyoung says, “You didn’t call me.”

Junhui is out on the balcony taking photos of the city which probably consist of at least eighty percent selfies, and with just the two of them it feels like a day right out of any of Wonwoo’s summer vacations.

“Sorry,” Wonwoo says.

Soonyoung stands and shrugs, then holds out his hand to Wonwoo. “You seem to be coping just fine.”

Wonwoo’s grandparents come around for dinner and Soonyoung sticks around as well. Wonwoo’s grandmother keeps loading up Junhui’s plate, remarking to Wonwoo, “See how well he’s eating. You wouldn’t be so skinny if you ate like him.” Junhui gives him a smug look over her head.

They leave shortly after dinner, and Soonyoung a few hours later. “Don’t let this one overthink himself into a coma,” he tells Junhui. “You need to play with him for at least an hour a day or he gets too idle.”

Junhui laughs. “I know. I’ve been trying my best.”

Soonyoung nods gravely. “You’re a good dude, Wen Junhui.” He turns to Wonwoo and hugs him. “Why are all of your friends consistently so much cooler and better-looking than you?”

“I know, it’s pretty amazing considering you’re dragging down their average so much,” Wonwoo says, and Soonyoung shoves him out of his arms and shuts Wonwoo’s front door in his own face.

While Junhui showers Wonwoo goes through birthday messages. There’s one from Mingyu and Jieqiong, one from Joshua in which he promises to take Wonwoo to a bookstore and buy him whatever he wants, and even one from Minkyung that’s a shaky video.

“Okay,” comes her voice, close to the camera, “go.” A group of a dozen college-aged students Wonwoo has never met raise their shot glasses and yell _Happy birthday Wonwoo!_

“I love you man!” one of them shouts, and the video cuts off in the middle of Minkyung’s pitchy laugh. Wonwoo watches the video twice and saves it, then scrolls back into his other messages.

There is one from Jihoon time-stamped an hour ago. It’s an audio file titled _[downpour](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCKOWQ-_CYc)_ , accompanied by a simple ‘happy birthday, listen with earphones’. Wonwoo fishes his out of his backpack, plugs them into his phone and plays the file.

A piano trickles into the opening chords. Wonwoo sits down on his bed and leans back against the wall, and then Jihoon begins to sing and Wonwoo stops moving entirely.

That is where Junhui finds him ten minutes later, phone asleep and earphones silent. Without a word he leans against the wall at the other end of the bed and opens a novel.

After some time, Wonwoo tugs on the wires of his headphones to pull them out of his ears. He falls onto his side on the bed and throws his arm over his eyes, crown of his head pressed into Junhui’s hip.

“What are you reading?” he asks, eyes shut tight beneath the arch of his elbow.

“ _Hónglóu mèng_ ,” Junhui replies. He goes quiet for a moment, thinking. Translating. “ _Dream of the red chamber_.”

“Is it good?”

“It’s my favorite.” Junhui shifts, and his phone in the pocket of his sweatpants digs into Wonwoo’s skull. Junhui wriggles it out of his pocket and drops it in his lap instead. “I’ve read it at least a dozen times.”

“What’s it about?”

“Everything.” Wonwoo hears a page turn. He hears voices in the living room. “It’s like a whole world in one book.”

Wonwoo wishes his world were just one sentence. His childhood bedroom, Wen Junhui, and Wen Junhui’s favorite book.

“Tell me about it,” Wonwoo says.

“It’s not that kind of book.” Wonwoo can hear the smile in Junhui’s voice. “It’s the kind of book you have to read or there’s no point.”

“Then read it to me,” Wonwoo says. “Please.”

A pause. “Okay,” Junhui says softly. Paper scrapes against paper; he’s turning to the front of the novel. His hand comes to rest over the jut of Wonwoo’s shoulder, and he begins to read.

Junhui’s Chinese is just as soft as his Korean, but the melody that is buried beneath it flows freely. The sibilance in his consonants falls into the sound of the television and Wonwoo’s parents talking and the tap in the kitchen running, like a silhouette behind a waterfall.

“That couplet is my favorite in the whole book,” Junhui murmurs in Korean. “I’ll try to translate it, wait.”

Wonwoo holds perfectly still. Junhui is silent but Wonwoo can feel him breathing. The warmth and weight of his hand is unchanging. Finally, he speaks:

“ _Truth becomes fiction when the fiction’s true;  
Real becomes not-real where the unreal’s real._ ”

 

 

 

 

Wonwoo dreams he is underwater.

He knows this because Junhui’s skin is bone-pale and shadowed with blue. He’s swimming towards Wonwoo, hands pressing through the space between them. He’s swimming towards him and his hair is diffused into an amorphous black halo.

Junhui is swimming towards him with the light at his back, and that is how Wonwoo realizes he is sinking.

 

 

 

 

They’ve been on the road back to Seoul for an hour when Junhui says, “Are there any beaches on the way?”

Wonwoo snorts. “We’re travelling from one corner of the country to the opposite one. Geography not your strong point?”

From the corner of his eye Wonwoo sees Junhui turn to look at him. He can’t see his expression but he can imagine it; a flat stare, betrayed by the corner of his mouth tugging up. “Then let’s detour.”

“Daecheon and Muchangpo are sort of in this direction,” Wonwoo says. “But it’ll add another two hours of driving time alone, at least.”

“You got something better to do?” Junhui asks. Wonwoo thinks about it for about ten seconds, then changes lanes. Junhui cheers and winds the windows all the way down.

They end up deciding on Muchangpo. “I think we missed the Moses Miracle by one day,” Wonwoo says.

“Oh,” Junhui says. “The one where the tides pull back so far that you can walk all the way to the island?”

“Seokdae-do, yeah.” They’re skimming along the road closest to shore while Wonwoo looks for a place to park. Junhui is pressed up against the passenger window.

“I would’ve really liked to see that,” he says.

Wonwoo slows and pulls into a parking space. “At least it’s less crowded this way,” he says, and Junhui makes a little _hmm_ sound almost like he disagrees.

There is a tepid wind coming off the water and the sun is shrouded in clouds. There are a few beachgoers scattered around but not many. Junhui and Wonwoo kick off their shoes and ball up their socks into their pockets to walk barefoot over the sand at the shoreline. The water is colder than Wonwoo expected, the first touch like a lick of ice at his heels.

“What are the odds,” Wonwoo begins, “that something washes up on the shore?”

“You mean like a shell?” Junhui asks. “Because I’d have to say pretty darn high.”

Wonwoo frowns so he won’t laugh. “No, something that’s not from the ocean. At least not originally.”

“Like a message in a bottle?”

“Yeah, I suppose.” Among other things.

“One hundred percent,” Junhui says, without missing a beat.

“That’s… not right,” Wonwoo says. “Very few things are a hundred percent certain.”

“I think there’s an error in your logic?” Junhui says, without a shred of self-satisfaction. “The ocean is big, but it’s not…” Wonwoo can hear Junhui looking for the words. “Not limitless? The odds that someday something will wash up on this shore is one hundred percent, or infinitely close to it at least.” Junhui stops to bend over and tug the rolled-up ends of his jeans up his calf where they’d been slipping. His hair falls with gravity, reaching toward the water in dark slashes. 

“What you really mean to ask,” Junhui says, voice muffled, “is what are the odds that something washes up when _we’re_ here. What are the odds we find it.” He straightens and pushes his hair back behind his ears with his damp fingers. “It will, that’s for certain. And it’s pretty likely someone will find it when it does, even if it’s not us. And if not the ocean will take it back, and someday it’ll wash up somewhere else.”

For someone who seems so open Junhui is often reticent when it comes to himself. Wonwoo has gathered, though, that others haven’t always been good to him. For some people it’s easy to mistake unlimited kindness with naivety, and if Wonwoo ever meets them he wants to shake them and ask how they could be so wrong about Junhui, who somehow seems to have the answer to every question Wonwoo gives him. Maybe do more than that for making Junhui build his own self-worth and carry it on his back since god-knows-when, just so he’d have any to speak of at all.

Junhui is walking deeper than him now, water at his ankles. “I still can’t work it out,” Wonwoo says. “The meteorology thing. Why you’re so obsessed with it.”

Junhui looks down at his feet. He slows down, scooping through the water as he walks and creating little arcs. “My dad,” he says, still not looking at Wonwoo, “he always had this thing about the weather. It was almost a pride thing for him, like being able to guess when it’d rain made him better than everyone else somehow.” A wave comes that’s larger than all the others, and Junhui skips back toward Wonwoo so the ends of his jeans don’t get wet.

“After my parents got divorced I only saw him occasionally and the first thing he’d say would always be about the weather.” The wave recedes and Junhui drifts away from him again. “Shit like that makes a big impression on you when you’re a kid, you know? It was like I somehow learned to equate the ability to know things about the weather with how good or smart or strong you are.” Junhui coughs a little laugh, at himself. “Which is completely stupid, I know. That might be why I was interested in the first place but I wouldn’t have kept going if I didn’t really love it. I think…” He pauses and his eyes go distant, a look Wonwoo has come to associate with startlingly clever insights on Junhui’s part. “I think it’s okay sometimes, to do a good thing for a bad reason.”

Wonwoo thinks about that for a long time. The ocean rasps over the shore like the breath of a sleeping beast. “It’s certainly better than doing a bad thing for a good reason,” he says finally.

“Like what?” Junhui asks, looking at him now.

Wonwoo tastes salt and beneath that, smoke. _Like, like…_

“Like giving the last of your money to your best friend so he can take the bus home and having to walk yourself. Except–” A wave drags at the soles of Wonwoo’s feet as it pulls back into the ocean like it’s trying to bring him with it. “Except it’s not just him, it’s everyone you’ve ever known. You use your life savings to send them all home on the bus.” A pair of gulls pass overhead, screeching. Wonwoo shades his eyes and watches them go; Junhui doesn’t.

“And so you walk. Except that you’re on the wrong continent and no matter how much you walk you’ll never get there.” The birds fade into the distant blue of the sky and then Wonwoo has nothing to watch but the ocean. “And there’s a storm. A storm so big it’s almost a hurricane, and you know it’s going to last forever.”

Junhui’s mouth is in a thoughtful line, like it is when he watches the radars. “Seems to me,” he says, “that that’s doing a bad thing for a bad reason. You haven’t given anyone else any choice. They might not want to leave you out there in the rain.”

Wonwoo isn’t watching the ocean anymore; he’s watching his toes sink into the soft sand, a little deeper with every wave that passes. He doesn’t remember stopping. “Oh,” he says.

“And,” Junhui goes on, “oceans aren’t invincible.” He points out at Seokdae-do. The tide has begun to recede; it won’t bare the earth between them and the island today but it will again at the end of this month, and the next month, and the one after that. “You can still get home.”

Wonwoo’s feet are almost gone by now, covered by a layer of silty sand. He could stand in this spot forever and from the surface the ground wouldn’t look any different. “Are you sure,” Wonwoo asks slowly, “that we don’t know each other from somewhere?”

“That depends,” Junhui replies. “I don’t think we’d met before we lived together, no. But I don’t know, I think it’s sometimes possible to know someone without meeting them. To recognize them?”

“An absence of loneliness,” Wonwoo says.

Junhui smiles at him, something a little bit daring in the edges. “Is that what this is?”

“No,” Wonwoo says, too fast, “it isn’t.” Junhui’s eyes widen a little in surprise, and Wonwoo wills himself not to look away. “Not anymore.”

 

 

 

 

They take a wrong turn two hours out of Seoul and are on a local two-lane road off the highway when Junhui says, “Pull over.”

“We only stopped an hour ago, you can hold it,” Wonwoo says, frowning out the windscreen at a road sign. “Get checked for a UTI when we’re back.”

Junhui reaches out to rest his fingertips on his shoulder. “Wonwoo,” he murmurs.

“Shit, okay,” he says, peeling off onto the shoulder of the road at once. “What’s wrong?”

“Further,” Junhui only says. “Where the trees end.” The car rolls over the gravel, crunching it under the tires. “Okay, good. Now get out.”

“What the hell?” Wonwoo says, but Junhui is already stepping out of the passenger door and slamming it shut. When Wonwoo turns the engine off and follows him out he’s standing by the back door on the passenger side, staring up.

“Hear that?” Junhui asks. Wonwoo listens but he only hears the breeze against the trees, and birds, and–

“Oh shit,” Wonwoo says. The rumble of thunder is distant but deep and it doesn’t stop for several seconds. The wind is not just a breeze, now that Wonwoo listens closer. It’s the kind of wind that threatens to bring much worse. “How long has that been building for?”

“I only started seeing it fifteen minutes ago. I think we drove straight into it. Come on–” Junhui opens the back door, “–get in.”

Junhui climbs into the backseat. When Wonwoo follows from the opposite side he’s already looking at his phone “Yep, a storm about to move through this area. One level under hurricane classification.” Junhui’s face is grim in the quickly dimming light. “I should’ve been checking.”

“At least you noticed eventually,” Wonwoo says. “Why are we in the backseat?”

“More space,” Junhui says. “We’ll be fine, though I wish we could’ve gotten to higher ground in case. We just don’t want to be driving through it. It’s gonna be one hell of a storm, best to wait it out.”

Ninety seconds later the rain envelops the car in curtains of water. The drops are huge and at once the glass is impossible to see through clearly for the water sluicing down it in waves.

“Holy shit,” Wonwoo says, but it’s lost in the roar of rain. “Holy shit!” he yells, and Junhui turns to look at him, grinning. The shadowy movement of water on the windows is projected onto his face.

The next crash of thunder is so loud that Wonwoo jumps. He can hear Junhui’s laugh over the storm. He moves closer to the center seat, tugging Wonwoo in too so they’re sharing it.

“You scared, Jeon Wonwoo?” he teases.

“No,” Wonwoo says. He isn’t cold, but he feels like he should be. “Not of the storm.”

“Good,” Junhui says. Wonwoo’s shoulder is jammed against his sternum and he can feel the bass in his voice when he speaks even if he can’t hear it. “Nothing to be scared of out there.”

“I’m scared of oceans,” Wonwoo says. He feels Junhui go still but for the slow thud from within his ribcage that can only be one thing. “They could swallow anything whole and it’d never be seen again.”

The line of Junhui’s thigh is hot against Wonwoo’s. His chin is hot when it brushes the back of his neck, his chest is hot against Wonwoo’s shoulderblade. “Nothing to be scared of down there either,” he says. Wonwoo shivers.

“Why?” Wonwoo says. “What could possibly be bigger than the ocean?” He twists his neck to look up at Junhui. He dips his head just as their eyes meet, like he’d been looking elsewhere until he felt Wonwoo move. If anyone were to brave the ocean and live to tell of it, Wonwoo thinks, it’d have to be Wen Junhui.

“The same thing that helps the tide connect islands,” Junhui says, eyes sparking like dull gemstones. “The same thing that starts storms and ends them, and what brings everything the ocean swallows back to shore again and again until it’s found.”

A flash of lightning. Wonwoo’s eyes are open so he sees it happen—sees the color leech from the world, last of all those eyes, until everything falls away into light. The world drops back into place before Wonwoo can even blink but the feeling doesn’t leave him; the feeling of watching Junhui vanish from sight so cleanly he might’ve never been there in the first place.

“What is it?” asks Wonwoo. He can’t hear himself but Junhui must hear him.

The roar of thunder reaches them, ear-splitting. Junhui leans in close. 

“Time,” he says softly, clear as a windchime above the lingering rumble of thunder. “Time.”

 

 

 

 

_The Lovers is associated with the astrological sign of Gemini, ‘The Twins.’_

(Hey,” Junhui says as he stops reading for a second, “I’m pretty sure I’m a Gemini.” He scans the paper to find his place again and traces the text with his fingertip to keep it.)

_It’s possible that when this card appears you are feeling conflicted about a relationship or situation in your life. It could be that your heart is telling you one thing, and your head another. Some people say there are only two modes that any of us are operating under at any time— fear, or love._

_When you can: choose love._

 

 

 

 

When they reach Seoul it is dark and the air is still in that hollow way that only follows storms. Wonwoo and Junhui ride the elevator together up to their floor, both holding their travel bags, both as quiet as the night sky. Junhui exits the elevator towards his room to the right, Wonwoo to the left. 

He walks around the bend in the corridor and unlocks his door. For a few seconds he stares into the shadows of his empty room, planes of gray cast by the streetlight outside.

The choice presents itself to him as clear as day: he can go inside his room and be there alone for the rest of the night, or he can turn around right now and go to the other end of the hall where Junhui is.

Wonwoo drops his bag and walks away, hearing the door slam closed when he’s already turned the corner.

Junhui’s door is open and the light is on. Wonwoo stands in the doorway, heart beating fast. Junhui looks up and sees him there but says nothing. He continues to unpack his bag: sets his toiletries on the desk, adds his dirty clothes to the pile in the corner, unbuckles his watch and puts it on the nightstand.

“Why aren’t you saying anything?” Wonwoo asks after a minute.

Junhui pauses with his back to Wonwoo, a pair of extra socks in his hand. “I’m giving you a chance to leave,” he says, placing them back into his drawer and sliding it shut.

“Then you know why I’m here?” Wonwoo asks. His hands are shaking; he grips the hem of his t-shirt.

“Of course,” Junhui says. “I always know everything you’re thinking. Sometimes I wish I didn’t.” Junhui stares down at his half-unpacked bag and sighs. He puts it on the floor and sits on his bed facing Wonwoo. “I can see exactly what you do to yourself and it’s…” Junhui runs a hand through his hair and lets it drop back to his lap. “Never mind that now. Come in, Jeon Wonwoo, let’s talk. Close the door behind you.”

Wonwoo’s heart surges into the back of his throat. “I don’t want to talk,” he says roughly, stepping inside.

Junhui’s laugh is warm and quiet and maybe a little sad. “Then just come here,” he says, so Wonwoo does.

The door clicks shut.

 

 

 

 

[ _Things I forgot_ , opened 1:14am Monday]

_You can set fire to pretty much anything if you try hard enough._

_But nothing—not worlds, not books, and not people—catches fire once it gets wet._

 

 

 

 

For some reason it surprises Wonwoo how heavy Junhui is when he presses him by his shoulders back onto his own bed and crawls on top of him, slow and deliberate like a big cat.

Wonwoo tells him so. Junhui laughs and asks, “Do you want me to get off?”

He’s about to reply with the obvious pun when Junhui dips down and presses his lips to the skin beneath Wonwoo’s jaw, and then he can’t say anything at all.

He keeps his hands by Wonwoo’s head, his fingers tangled in his hair, for which Wonwoo is grateful. Junhui is trying not to scare him, and Wonwoo’s trying not to be scared; not of this or him, but of everything else. Wonwoo’s mouth is dry and his pants are tight and he wishes his head would shut the fuck up.

He reaches over to turn out the light, and then inches his arm back into the space between them. Wonwoo feels all the air leave Junhui’s lungs when he pushes his palm against the zipper of his jeans.

“You don’t,” he mutters, “ah, have to.”

“I know,” Wonwoo says. He works open the button and slides his hand against the silky skin of Junhui’s stomach, then lower and lower and lower until he makes a breathy, bitten back noise against Wonwoo’s neck that he knows he’ll be hearing in his head when he jerks off for months to come.

The angle is weird and makes the muscles in Wonwoo’s arm ache, but Junhui kisses him hard, biting his lips and groaning from low in his chest. He likes it slow and with a lot of pressure, Wonwoo learns, after Junhui mutters _fuck, fuck fuckfuck_ into his mouth when he tries it that way.

Junhui’s hair rubs against his cheek, rough with salt. Wonwoo pushes his left hand into it and pulls gently until he lifts his head, their lips coming apart. Junhui’s pupils are blown and his cheeks are flushed, and Wonwoo wishes he hadn’t turned off the light so he could see exactly how deep the darkness in his eyes goes.

“Oh,” Junhui whispers, hips rocking into Wonwoo’s hand, “oh, my god. I’m not gonna last much longer.”

His arms begin to tremble either side of Wonwoo’s head, body sinking towards him. He presses his lips to Wonwoo’s, his breathing ragged.

“It’s okay,” Wonwoo tells him. “You can touch, it’s okay.”

Wonwoo feels Junhui’s eyelashes sweep his cheek as his eyes close. He makes another sound in the back of his throat and pulls his elbows out from under him, all his weight falling to Wonwoo’s chest and crushing him into the mattress.

His hands are at Wonwoo’s sides, hot and sure as the push his t-shirt up around his ribs and sweep over his stomach. The one that lands against the waistband of his jeans, the pad of his thumb pressing into Wonwoo’s hipbone, makes him shudder.

It doesn’t take Junhui long after that. His weight grows heavier and heavier on top of Wonwoo until he’s jamming his hips forward into Wonwoo’s hand, crushing it between them, and exhaling a low, long moan into the space between Wonwoo’s collarbones.

He lies there on top of him for thirty seconds, panting hard. “Fuck,” he says finally, peeling himself up off of Wonwoo. “I think I made a mess, sorry.”

Junhui did make a mess. He wipes off Wonwoo’s stomach and wrist with a wad of tissues out of the box on the nightstand and pulls off his own shirt, then Wonwoo’s. He climbs off the bed to drop them in the pile of dirty clothes in the corner of the room. Wonwoo levers himself up to sit at the edge of the bed, watching him. Junhui’s eyes go dark when he turns back and sees him there.

There are no streetlights on this side of the building, only what filters through the windows from the moon. Junhui’s bare upper body is a mosaic of hard blue-gray curves that rearrange as he walks over to Wonwoo.

Junhui rests his hands on Wonwoo’s bare shoulders and looks down at him. He doesn’t break eye-contact as his palms slide down to Wonwoo’s elbows, rough and overstimulating. His hands drop to Wonwoo’s thighs and slowly, slowly, Junhui sinks to his knees.

 

 

 

 

Lately Wonwoo has been thinking a lot about all the stories he’s never finished. There are a lot of them on his computer, documents that begin to say something important only to stop halfway through a sentence. He tried to explain it to Joshua once but Wonwoo doesn’t think he really understood.

For weeks Wonwoo chased the metaphor around in circles. Cake batter in a cold oven, a song with all but the melody, a fully-furnished apartment left to gather dust for years, before he found it.

Imagine walking down a road. Every few-hundred meters is a bus-stop, and at every bus-stop is a person. Some of them have shopping bags, some of them are on their phones or have earphones in, or keeping rocking forward to check the road anxiously like they have somewhere important to be. A high-school kid and a woman in her thirties and a businessman, it doesn’t matter who they are, really. All of them are alone and all of them are waiting for a bus that will never come.

In this metaphor Wonwoo should probably be driving the bus. The joke’s on them though, because he’s somewhere along the line walking home, drenched to the skin.

But maybe all that means is that the joke’s on him too.

 

 

 

 

Wonwoo finds out that the way the summer speeds up from the midway point to the end, like something hurtling from the sky and hitting terminal velocity, holds true even when he’s not on break.

Junhui is flying back to China early tomorrow morning. Right now it’s one am and he’s lying on the carpet beside Wonwoo at the Meteorological Administration, trying to sober up after a late dinner involving soju with Wonwoo’s friends. The lights of the radars blink smudges and shadow onto his face so that Wonwoo can’t tell if the flush on his cheeks is real or not.

“Let’s play a game,” Junhui says. “Tell me something true. If you lie I’ll know.”

Wonwoo rolls onto his back and closes his eyes. “I’m sad that you’re leaving”, he says, after a few seconds of almost saying _I wish you’d stay_ before deciding he’d rather not know if that’s a lie or not.

He feels Junhui nudge up against his side, curled up like a shrimp; his forehead bumps Wonwoo’s shoulder and his knees against his hip. “I knew that already,” he says. “Something only you know.”

Junhui smells like alcohol. They need to go home sometime in the next few hours so he can shower or they won’t let him on the plane. Wonwoo keeps meaning to suggest it but the words never quite make it past the back of his tongue.

“I can’t think of anything,” Wonwoo says. “You know it all.”

“Now _that’s_ a lie,” Junhui says, kneeing him gently in the side for emphasis.

Wonwoo doesn’t open his eyes. Junhui is breathing evenly beside him, set to the whir of the computers on the floor a few meters away. Wonwoo thinks and thinks and thinks, for so long that he’s not sure Junhui is even waiting for an answer anymore. Finally he says, “One day I want to have a garden.”

Junhui hums in response. He was waiting, of course he was. “What kind of garden?”

“It doesn’t have to be a big one. Some vegetables, some flowers.” Junhui shifts, his head burrowing into Wonwoo’s arm, and his heart does something awful in his chest. “I don’t think I can though. Gardening is much easier with two people; half the chance of forgetting to water it, twice the chance of picking the right day to plant.”

When Wonwoo looks to the side Junhui’s eyes are closed, which is why he lets himself stare. He smiles as he says, “No one’s supposed to be alone, Wonwoo.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in fate?” Junhui is not watching the radars for once, the significance of which Wonwoo refuses to think about.

Eyes still closed, Junhui laughs. “That’s not fate,” he says. “That’s anthropology.”

 

 

 

 

So Wonwoo goes with Junhui on the subway at nine in the morning to the bus terminal that runs charters to Incheon International airport, almost too late to make his bus but not quite.

A shuttle full of people are watching them disinterestedly out the window and Wonwoo spends three seconds talking himself in and out of every possible scenario before Junhui steps forward and hugs him, a heartbeat too long.

“See you, Jeon Wonwoo,” is all he says when he steps back.

And Wonwoo talks himself in and out of every possible reply before Junhui snorts. “Don’t pull a muscle. Just tell me to have a good flight.”

“Bye,” Wonwoo says, “I’ll…” Junhui raises an eyebrow. “Have a good flight.”

So Wen Junhui gets on the bus, and the bus drives out of the terminal with a roar of exhaust, and that’s that. It’s all strangely anti-climactic.

That afternoon Wonwoo clears all of his shit out of the dorm for good and takes the train back to Changwon. Soonyoung picks him up from the station and Wonwoo kind of wishes he would hug him for a long time but he doesn’t of course, because he doesn’t know anything, because Wonwoo hasn’t told him.

“So uh,” Soonyoung begins, lounging on Wonwoo’s neatly made bed as Wonwoo unpacks; he’ll have to repack again in a month to go back to Seoul but he refuses to live out of a suitcase in his own home. “Whatever happened between you and Jihoon, you gotta fix it.”

Wonwoo almost drops the pile of shirts he’s holding. “Did he say something to you?”

“Of course not.” Soonyoung is on his stomach, legs kicked up behind him, scrolling through his phone. Wonwoo wonders if he’s acting disinterested to make this easier on him. “He just makes this face like someone’s holding a knife to his balls every time someone mentions your name.”

“I know the one.” Wonwoo stacks the shirts back into his wardrobe one by one. “Why do I have to fix it?”

“Because you’re the slightly less emotionally constipated of the two of you,” Soonyoung says. “Mingyu keeps asking me if he needs to pick a side. You’re gonna make him go prematurely gray and then Jieqiong will be well and truly out of his league.”

“He can dye it back.” Soonyoung always does this; gives Wonwoo an easy out. Normally Wonwoo would take it and Soonyoung would expect him to. He’s probably a little off his game today. “It’s not that I…” Wonwoo says, “I’m not angry at him.”

It only takes Soonyoung one beat to recover from the surprise that Wonwoo’s actually engaging in this discussion. “Yeah,” he says, swinging around to sit cross-legged in one smooth movement, “but is that because you shouldn’t be or because you’re doing that thing where you think your feelings don’t matter if it means everyone else can be happy.”

Wonwoo starts coughing. “I don’t,” he says, “do that. What the hell?”

Soonyoung makes this face that’s half-smug and half-pitying and would ordinarily make Wonwoo want to fight him, but right now it kind of just makes him want to sleep for a very long time. “All right man, whatever you say.”

Wonwoo goes to put the clothes he’s holding away then realizes his hands are empty. They drop to his sides and Soonyoung watches it happen, the smugness on his face dropping with it. “I’m…” Wonwoo says, “confused. I think I’m making a big mistake.”

Soonyoung puts his phone down behind him and settles his hands in his lap. “What mistake?”

“I don’t know. That’s what I’m confused about.” Soonyoung waits like he wants Wonwoo to explain, but he doesn’t even know where he’d begin: with a blue sky, or with a bus that’s never coming, or with the little breathless sound Junhui makes when Wonwoo turns around and shoves him up against the door a moment after he closes it behind them.

“Look, I know we mostly just punch each other and shit,” Soonyoung says. “But you know you can tell me anything, right? And right now you kinda look like you need to tell someone something before your brain caves in.”

Wonwoo wishes he were in Seoul in a bar thirty minutes from where he lives with a pretty bartender who’s a great listener. He wishes he were on the floor of Meteorological Administration with Wen Junhui, or lying in his bed half-naked, or just sitting there in the room with him, fully-clothed and reading in silence. He wishes he were anywhere but in his childhood bedroom with a guy he’s known since he was six, where anything he says will carve itself into the walls and never leave.

“You just,” Soonyoung starts, when Wonwoo is obviously not going to say anything, “you do this thing sometimes where you say stuff and it’s like I don’t even know you.” Soonyoung makes this pained face that reminds him so much of Jihoon. “You don’t mean to be an asshole but you know all my shit—like, all of it—and it’s weird that I don’t know any of yours.”

“You–” _do know_ , Wonwoo starts to say but realizes halfway through that no, he seriously doesn’t. And that’s weird to Wonwoo too, because Soonyoung really is his best friend and Wonwoo really does know all his shit and he’s not sure how that happens, or how Wonwoo let it happen.

“Like,” Soonyoung interrupts, tearing Wonwoo back into reality because he can probably see the thoughts piling up behind his eyes, “it’s great you want to make sweet love to your books or whatever, but you’re not one of them. I think you forgot that somewhere along the way. You can’t keep rewriting yourself into what you think people want to read and crossing out the parts they don’t, it’s– pretty fucked up, honestly. You’re a person, not a book.”

Of all the voices, it’s Junhui’s that comes to Wonwoo’s mind. Junhui telling him, _People aren’t skies_.

“I’m gay,” Wonwoo says, the words out of his mouth and in the room like a pair of great-whites before he can think about it.

“You’re…” Soonyoung’s eyes are huge. Wonwoo closes his. “Oh my god. Oh, my god.”

“Or bisexual or something.” Wonwoo can hear his own voice from a distance, like a voicemail message. “I liked Sooyoung but she was probably an exception, I don’t know.” It’s hitting Wonwoo now, the gravity. He sits down in the middle of the floor. “I’m not sure what to call it. I didn’t really plan on ever telling anyone.”

“Wait,” Soonyoung says, “ _oh_. Junhui?”

“Yeah.” Wonwoo doesn’t want to open his eyes, He doesn’t want to see the look on Soonyoung’s face. “Not when you met him, not yet, but.” Wonwoo swallows so hard it hurts. “Yeah.”

“Shit,” Soonyoung says. “That makes so much sense now I think about it.” Wonwoo doesn’t have to look to know he’s running his hand through his hair. “So Jihoon knows? That’s what you fought about?”

When Wonwoo cracks his eyes open the room feels brighter than before, like his eyes adjusted while they were closed, or the sun shifted. Soonyoung isn’t looking at him, flopped back onto the bed the wrong way and looking at the ceiling like he intends to be there for a while.

“I never told him but I guess he does now. I don’t think he really knew that he knew until he said something stupid and saw the look on my face.” Soonyoung winces. Wonwoo feels a sudden rush of affection for him that he’d rather die than admit to out loud. “It’s okay, I forgave him. He wrote me a song.”

Soonyoung laughs. “Shit, really?”

Wonwoo turns his hands over in his lap. He cracks the knuckles on his left hand, then his right. “Yeah.”

“That’s like the Jihoon version of a three-hour apology press conference, except with more strings. It must’ve been eating him up big-time.”

“Must’ve been,” Wonwoo echoes. He’s been listening to that song a lot, actually, and it’s… He should talk to Jihoon.

“No wonder you look so tortured all the time,” Soonyoung says, wriggling his upper back on the bed to get comfortable. “I thought it was just a writer thing. How on earth have you been keeping a secret like that?”

“Don’t get it twisted, I’m definitely a tortured writer,” Wonwoo says. His voice sounds normal again, like his own. “And fear, I guess.” Soonyoung gets it right away, his eyes darting from Wonwoo to the closed door.

“Maybe,” Soonyoung says, “maybe it’d be okay? They’re not bad people. They love you.”

“Bohyuk maybe,” Wonwoo says, “but… Look, it’s not like I hate myself over this or anything, but I’m just being realistic. I’m not Joshua-hyung. My parents have lived in Changwon their whole lives; their idea of progressive is skinny jeans and selfies.” 

Junhui rolling off the bed and wriggling his jeans back on at nine at night so they can go and eat, pausing when he picks up his phone to say, “Wait, I look good,” and opening the camera. “Give me two minutes.” 

Soonyoung can’t see all of that on Wonwoo’s face but he definitely sees him flinch. 

“And yeah,” Wonwoo says, when he feels like he can speak without the words congealing in his throat, “maybe it’d be okay, and maybe some people are brave enough to find out, but I’m not one of them.”

Soonyoung looks very sad. “But what about you?” he asks. “You can’t just live a secret life forever.”

“I won’t,” Wonwoo says. “There’ll be no secrets to keep. Junhui–” Wonwoo spoke too soon, the words get caught anyway. He clears them and tries again. “He was an exception. A once-off thing. But he’s gone now.”

“That’s… That’s really shitty.” Soonyoung’s leg is hanging off the bed, his calf swinging and hitting the bed-frame a little harder with each oscillation. “Ultra shitty. Next-level shit.”

Wonwoo stands up and crosses the room to his suitcase, spread open on the floor like an autopsy patient. Wonwoo feels a little less like one than he did ten minutes ago. “It’s life,” he says, picking up another armful of clothes.

“Yeah,” Soonyoung says, “and it’s shit.”

 

 

 

 

Wonwoo receives a letter a few days later from an Anyang address. It doesn’t say much inside, which makes sense because if Mingyu had things to say to him he’d use his phone number. There is a little scrap of paper with a few words scrawled on it:

_Hi hyung,_

_I took this on the weekend and thought you might want it since you’re basically the only person in it lol. Call me I miss you._

_-Mingyu_

The last thing in the envelope is a polaroid. Wonwoo vaguely remembers Mingyu holding the camera that night, flitting around to test it out on them. The photo is face-down when Wonwoo slides it out. He holds it by the edges to flip it over.

Wonwoo is visible in profile sitting in a booth at a bar, the shot taken from outside it. Beside him, hidden from the camera by his body, is a flash of long dark hair that is probably Jieqiong. Wonwoo kind of remembers now; the slash of caramel hair just visible beside her must be her friend that’d come out with them.

But the Wonwoo in the picture isn’t looking at them. He’s looking across the table, directly opposite him in the booth. There’s this look on his face that’s not quite a smile but is so warm that it threatens to eclipse the yellow glow of the bar lighting.

There’s someone walking by Mingyu, a flash of denim and a pale wrist close to the camera. The other side of the booth, where Wonwoo is looking, is obscured by it. There might be the curve of a shoulder in a black t-shirt but it could just as easily be a shadow; the golden blur that could be an elbow resting on the table, the fingertips of the person passing by.

Wonwoo eyes fall back to himself. He looks… He looks exactly like Mingyu does when he looks at Jieqiong. There’s a word for it, one Wonwoo has been very carefully avoiding for the past few days, probably longer.

It doesn’t matter. Wonwoo slips the photo back into the envelope and sets it on the corner of his desk. That expression, that word, none of it matters. Not when he might as well be looking at nothing at all.

 

 

 

 

“Oh hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you.” Joshua’s voice over the phone is robotic and muffled. In the background children are screaming and Joshua keeps taking deep breaths like he’s trying his hardest not to join them. “Did you ever finish that story you were writing at the start of summer? About rain, I think you said.”

Wonwoo’s fingers pause over his keyboard. The phone begins to slip between his shoulder and ear, and he repositions it. “No,” he says, as he starts typing again, “I didn’t.”

Joshua hums. “Are you still writing it?

“I…” 

Wonwoo’s eyes sting and go out of focus; he needs to go and find his eye-drops. His fingers stop for good this time. He rubs his eyes behind his glasses. The screen is blurry, and all at once the present slams into him and Wonwoo can’t for the life of him remember what he was just writing. 

“It’s weird, actually,” he says, hands dropping. His eyes are closed. “I really don’t know.”

 

 

 

 

(“Wait,” Soonyoung said, several hours later. It was getting late and they were messing around on the Playstation. Soonyoung would probably stay over that night even though Wonwoo hadn’t offered; there are some things that don’t need to be said between best friends. “What’s the mistake?”

“You are,” Wonwoo said instantly. He was out of practice and Soonyoung was kicking his ass and he was pretty bitter about it.

“Haha good one, but seriously.” Soonyoung paused the game so Wonwoo would actually pay attention. “You said earlier you were confused and you thought you were making a mistake.”

“Oh, that,” Wonwoo said, frowning and turning back to the screen. 

“Is it that you let him leave?”

“Maybe,” Wonwoo said. Soonyoung still didn’t unpause the game, so Wonwoo sighed and said, “No.”

“Is it the whole thing then? You regret that you two ever…”

“No,” Wonwoo said, “not that.” His voice was quiet against the background music of the game. “I don’t think I’ve made the mistake yet.”

Soonyoung turned his body to face him and slapped his bicep with the back of the hand that was holding his controller. “Wait you idiot, then the mistake isn’t real. You don’t have to make it.”

Wonwoo caught his wrist and held it still against Soonyoung’s struggling to jab the unpause button. Soonyoung yelped and fumbled his controller back to his chest as Wonwoo turned back to the screen.

“That word,” Wonwoo said. Soonyoung glanced at him in between the flickering of the television light, but he wasn’t really listening anymore. “That’s the mistake.”)

 

 

 

 

–those _eyes_ , darker than the bottom of the ocean. In this room where the lights shift and flicker they hold the gravity and center the orbit.

“You…” Wonwoo says, but the bass is so loud he can’t even hear himself. “You can’t possibly…” 

“I can’t what?” Junhui asks. His lips trace out the words and Wonwoo can’t hear those either, but he knows exactly what they are.

Bodies shift around them, keeping them close together. Wonwoo could lean in two inches and kiss him. “You can’t possibly be–”

And then the roof caves inwards. People scream. Claws like stalactites emerge through the plaster. Junhui’s body-heat disappears from Wonwoo’s side just as, with a noise like the end of the earth, the ceiling shivers and tears free.

 

 

 

 

The last day of summer is not like the first; it rains hard, harder than is normal for the end of August. Junhui tells him so the night before. Wonwoo can hear the excitement in his voice over text in his head.

Over the past few summers Soonyoung has worked as a lifeguard at the indoor pool a fifteen minute walk from Wonwoo’s house. At six in the evening Wonwoo puts on his shoes and grabs his umbrella on the way out the front door.

He should know to trust almost anything Junhui says about the weather by now but the ferocity of the storm still surprises him once he’s right there in the middle of it. This is not a quiet storm; the wind beats the rain into the ground and whips through the sky far above. It tries to tear the umbrella from him not even halfway down his street and he has to pull it back down with both hands.

He’s just too far from home that it wouldn’t make sense to turn back when a ripping sound comes from above his head, soft and out of place against the noise of the storm. Rain trickles down his scalp and beneath the collar of his shirt, just enough of autumn edging in that it’s ice-cold.

Wonwoo stops and looks up. The small rip in the nylon of the umbrella from the start of the summer has grown to tear half of it away from the frame. Wonwoo’s left side is soaked.

All of him is soaked when he gets to the pool twenty minutes after closing. The door is locked but Soonyoung sees him from the front desk and comes around to open it for him.

“What the fuck happened to you?” he says. Wonwoo collapses the umbrella and steps inside, dripping on the doormat. 

“I’m fine,” he says.

Soonyoung lets go of the door and it swings shut. “You’re not dude, you’re shivering.” Wonwoo really does feel fine, and it’s only once Soonyoung grabs him by the forearm to bring him through to the pool area and his hand is like a furnace that he realizes how cold he is. “Why’re you using a broken umbrella?”

“It’s my dad’s.” 

Soonyoung lets go of his arm. “That doesn’t mean it’ll keep you dry forever. Or that you have to keep using it when it doesn’t.” The lights in here are off; Soonyoung has already locked up for the night. There are windows but the storm chokes most of the light before it makes it that far. “Wait here,” he says, taking the lanyard from his neck and heading for the change rooms. “I’ll try to find you something dry to wear.”

Wonwoo is a good swimmer, not good like Soonyoung who’d clean sweep the events in their age category at regional swimming carnivals when they were in high-school, but he’s not going under in still waters anytime soon.

He kicks off his shoes and socks and squeezes out of jeans, heavy and tight with water. He’s beside the diving pool, the one that the sign tells him is five meters deep. The water is gray and still, and in the darkness Wonwoo can’t see the bottom.

He steps up to the edge, takes a deep breath in, and pindrops into the water feet first without a sound.

It is cold but in a comfortable way; the kind of cold you could get used to. The second thing he notices, after the surface settles a little and he’s sinking away from it, is the silence. Wonwoo exhales half the air in his lungs and pushes with his hands to bring himself closer to the bottom.

Once he hits it he pushes off the side with his feet to bring himself to the middle. He feels his lungs begin to ask for air but it’s fine; for years he and Soonyoung and Bohyuk used to screw around like this, competing to see who could stay under the longest. Wonwoo knows his limits, he has plenty of time yet.

A few stray bubbles of air slip from between his lips. Wonwoo closes his eyes. It isn’t bad down here. It is so peaceful, silent and utterly still. When Wonwoo was a kid, before he knew himself or the world, peace wouldn’t have been what he wanted most out of his life. It isn’t what twenty-two year old Wonwoo wants either but sitting here in the complete silence, cold but not so cold he can’t bear it, he thinks he’d be willing to settle for it.

He hears a sound, distant. When he opens his eyes the chlorine makes it hard to see, but the surface is no longer still. A gray blur is shooting toward him from above, cutting through the water like a seal. 

Wonwoo still has enough air, he doesn’t need to go back up yet. But the sheer relief that shoots through him when he realizes Soonyoung is coming to drag him there whether he likes it or not is so sudden and so strong. Wonwoo thinks maybe he overestimated himself, that maybe he can’t stay down here after all.

He kicks off the bottom and meets Soonyoung halfway. Soonyoung swivels and hauls them both up to the surface, an arm around Wonwoo’s ribs, faster than Wonwoo could’ve done it himself. He watches the surface approach, a sheet of clear shapes that seems impossible until he’s breaking through into it and gasping air back into his lungs.

“What the fuck?” Soonyoung yells. It echoes in the big space of the pool area. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

“I was going for a swim,” Wonwoo says, though in hindsight Soonyoung was absolutely right to assume the worst; it’s his job.

“Thank god,” Soonyoung says, as they both swim towards the edge. “I thought I was gonna have to choose between giving you CPR and letting you die. It was gonna be close.” 

Wonwoo cups his hand just below the surface and splashes him square in the face.

They reach the edge and pull themselves out of the water. Soonyoung is still fully clothed and a change of clothes is lying on the floor by the door to the storeroom; he must’ve dropped everything and run. 

“You’re definitely okay?” Soonyoung asks, stripping off his shirt and grimacing as he wrings the water out of it. “Didn’t swallow any water or anything?”

“I was fine,” Wonwoo says. “I think I was just about to come back up anyway.”

 

 

 

 

And so life goes on. 

Wonwoo goes back to Seoul with Soonyoung and graduates with a surprisingly good GPA eight months later. 

A week into semester he walks to the record shop. Jihoon is there, and he starts to say something when he hears the door open that abruptly fades when he looks up and sees it’s Wonwoo.

“Hey,” Wonwoo says, coming up to the counter. Jihoon looks down at both his hands and then back at Wonwoo’s face like he’s checking for a weapon or something. “I really liked that song you sent me on my birthday.”

Jihoon frowns, obviously not what he was expecting Wonwoo to say to him. “Oh,” he says, “thanks.”

“You wrote the lyrics too?”

“Yeah, but they were just…” Jihoon shifts in his seat like he can’t decide if he should stand up or not. “We don’t have to talk about it.”

“I want to,” Wonwoo says. “Sometime.” Jihoon stares at him for a long moment like he’s trying to decide if Wonwoo’s fucking with him. Wonwoo holds his gaze. 

Jihoon nods. “Okay,” he says. He’s not smiling but he looks a little bit happy. “Sometime.”

Wonwoo finishes writing something over winter break, a novella-length piece about a bookshop. Joshua reads it and says, “You should send this one to publishers. All of them, as many as you can find.” So he does, and hears back from more than one.

And before he knows it it’s the first day of summer again. It rains of course, just a gentle tap of water on the pavements and windows. Wonwoo doesn’t take an umbrella when he steps into his shoes and goes outside.

There is no-one at the bus-stop. Wonwoo sits down, shoulders and hair damp from the rain but mostly dry otherwise. After ten minutes someone wearing black passes behind the shelter, Wonwoo sees the shape and movement through the glass from the corner of his eye. They round the shelter to the front, and Wonwoo closes his eyes.

He feels the bench dip with the weight of someone sitting on the other end. 

“Why are your eyes closed?” Junhui asks him.

Wonwoo licks his lips. He’s sitting at the edge of the shelter, and his hands in his lap are collecting fine drops of rain. “I haven’t decided if I want to see anything when I open them yet.”

Junhui thinks about that for one moment. Wonwoo listens to the rain. “Huh,” he says. “You’ve gotten smarter.”

“You’ve gotten better looking,” Wonwoo says. Junhui laughs and Wonwoo’s chest constricts like something in it wants to burst out, even after almost a year. “Are you a meteorologist yet?”

“Yes,” Junhui says. “Wow, you really don’t forget anything, do you?”

“Not really,” Wonwoo says. A car passes by that he can only hear. “I’m not good at letting things go.”

“That’s funny,” Junhui says. “I’m not good at being let go of.”

Wonwoo wipes the droplets that have gathered on the backs of his hands onto his t-shirt. “That isn’t very funny.”

“No,” Junhui murmurs, “it isn’t. Where’s your umbrella?”

“It broke.”

“Oh?” Junhui says. “You really liked that umbrella, didn’t you?”

“I did,” Wonwoo says. The rain is fading, he doesn’t have to be a meteorologist to hear that.

“I’ll buy you a new one,” Junhui says. “You can’t just walk around in the rain all summer.”

“I could,” Wonwoo says.

“Now I know you definitely got smarter,” Junhui says. “You’re talking exactly like me.”

Wonwoo says, “Or are you talking like me?” which makes them both laugh because they both know it’s exactly what Junhui would’ve said.

“What are you waiting for?” Junhui asks. “A bus?”

“No,” Wonwoo says. “I’m waiting for the rain to end.”

The bench creaks and tilts; Junhui is leaning forward to look up at the sky, probably. “It’ll be soon,” he says. “It’s perfect weather for planting right now, I think.” That almost makes Wonwoo open his eyes. He still hasn’t decided, but he desperately wants... “What do you think will happen when it does end?” Junhui asks.

“I don’t know,” Wonwoo says. “I only know that it will.”

“Got a hunch?”

Wonwoo can imagine Junhui sitting there, eyes and t-shirt and hair all black. Hands beside him on the bench, holding a little of his weight, head twisted and tilted to watch Wonwoo.

“Yeah,” Wonwoo says. “I do.”

Junhui hums like he’s pleased with Wonwoo’s answer, but only a little. “Mind if I wait with you? I’d like to see how this story ends.”

“I don’t mind,” Wonwoo says. The bench creaks again like Junhui is leaning back, settling against the bench to wait for however long it may take.

It’s like this: Wonwoo’s eyes are closed, and there is no silence. Far away there are car engines passing by on the main street, and much closer is Wen Junhui, humming a song Wonwoo has definitely heard more than once before.

And all around is the rain; hitting the pavement and the bus shelter and Wonwoo’s bare arms. 

The sound of rain that is finally coming to an end.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a very experimental work for me to say the least, so if you've made it this far then I'm very grateful. Once again, here's a [very sad song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Txl5qkq-76E) and a [kind of happy song](https://youtu.be/ff0oWESdmH0?t=1m28s)??
> 
> The information on the tarot cards that Junhui reads is from the pages of the respective cards [here](http://www.psychic-revelation.com/reference/q_t/tarot/tarot_cards/), edited slightly by me for flow and relevance.
> 
> And lastly thanks to Wonwoo for that ridiculous pun during one fine day using 기상청 (Korea Meteorological Administration) it was visionary I was inspired


End file.
